


you're my saving grace

by babybel, sciencebutch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Tenderness, here, you know how the doctor and charley dont talk about scherzo at all?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23206066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencebutch/pseuds/sciencebutch
Summary: After the events of Scherzo, the Doctor and Charley have a little hearts to heart.
Relationships: Eighth Doctor/Charley Pollard
Comments: 9
Kudos: 27





	you're my saving grace

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to ao3 user [remis777](https://archiveofourown.org/users/remis777/pseuds/remis777) for beta - ing!

Months of walking around in a glass tube did nothing to take away from the fact that the Doctor felt incredibly, irreparably lost. It felt like he'd been blinded and deafened and had a limb hacked off. The difficulty of wading through the world without the steady thrum of time had taken a lot out of him, and he felt more and more weary as the inconsequential seconds ticked by. 

After the fiasco with Kro'ka where his and Charley's mind had been invaded, he'd felt more tired than ever before: he’d been caught off-guard by the attack, had had to scramble a defense together last-minute. He'd practically stumbled out of the Interzone, feeling exceptionally worn through, quite like an old boot; together, the two of them had found a cave: some sandstone formation under an outcropping of rock. The Doctor had built a fire, and was intending to rest a bit, recuperate from the occurrences of the past few months, when Charley spoke.

"What you said back there," Charley said carefully, hoping it wasn't too out of the blue. For her, it couldn't be. She'd been thinking about how to phrase this for what could be months — seeing as there was no time anymore — she might have been thinking about this forever. "In— in the tube." She couldn't stop the shudder that leapt through her, the thought of what they'd gone through there still nauseating, even after forever. 

She took a deep breath. She had to get through this; it wasn't for her. "About being on your own." She closed her eyes, recalling his exact words. "About not being able to be on your own again." The thought of it, of him scared and hurt, clawed at her chest, fostered a dull ache between her ribs. She forced her eyes open, so grateful for the sense of sight again, and looked over at him. "You know you're not on your own, don't you?"

The Doctor was leaning against the wall, looking lazily into the leaping flames of the fire. There was a bit of rock jutting out and poking him uncomfortably in the small of his back, but he was too tired to move. When Charley spoke, he sluggishly glanced up to look at her. 

Propping a knee up so he could lean his head on it, he poked at the fire with a stick, just to have something to do with his hands. 

There was still a bit of him that wished he had come here on his own, just so Charley would be safe, able to live out the rest of her life. Marry and have children, hand her brooch off to her daughter. Guilt gnawed at him still, latched onto him like a leech. What he had said about not wanting to be alone had been spoken in a moment of weakness, of selfishness that wholly disgusted him when he thought back on it.

"I'm still not entirely convinced it's for the best," he said, prodding at the wood with a renowned vigor. Sparks popped and flew, and he watched as they smoldered and extinguished in the air. "For you to be here."

Charley winced. She knew he'd do this, she knew he'd turn it back on her, and it wasn't like she hadn't heard it before. It still hurt, though. She didn't know how true it was, but she couldn't help thinking that she had given everything up for him, over and over, and despite that, he still didn’t want her there. 

She was probably just being foolish, just overthinking like she always did, just being silly, just being a silly little—

"I'm aware," she said, too loudly, stifling her thoughts, "that you're not convinced. You made that overtly clear."

He flinched. She was angry with him, he could tell. He knew all her tics, what her voice sounded like when she was overjoyed, frustrated, mad. He knew, mostly because he had lived with her for the better part of a year, seen her at her best and at her worst. But she was also a part of him now, as he was a part of her, and they knew each other better than anyone else. 

His actions in the glass tube had been unforgivable; he'd been curt and callous, he'd been hurting — still was hurting — and he’d hurt her. There’s another wave of guilt. 

"Charley," he said, and it sounded like a plea, "It's not like that, I—" he fumbled over his words, his voice crumbling and dying in his throat, turning to dust, "I—" he looked away from her. "I'm sorry."

She tore her eyes away from the dance of the fire and looked at him. Maybe they were in one of those moments, moments where she could only look at him if he wasn't looking at her. 

Odd, she thought. She wasn't sure they'd ever had one of those before. She wanted to reach over and tuck some of his curls behind his ears and kiss the lids of his eyes and touch her fingertips to the scar across his throat. She remembered, with a shock, that she was the one who had left that scar. She was always hurting him. And she was hurting him again, now. 

"No, I didn't—" she started, and the words got stuck in her throat. "I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry. I just—" She pushed out a breath. She couldn't let herself get frustrated now, because then she'd cry, and then he'd fuss over her and she didn't want to be fussed over, she wanted to actually be able to say what she was trying to say. She willed him to look at her. Carefully, voice pushed up taut and high, she said, "How can you not see that we're better when we're together? We— Doctor— we make each other better, and I just—" She pressed a hand over her mouth, tears slipping down her cheeks. Her face felt too hot, and why on Earth couldn't she just say things without getting upset over every word?

The Doctor’s eyes widened with concern and he rushed over, tentatively putting his hands on her shoulders, pulling her in gently so she was leaning against him. 

“We  _ are _ better together, Charley,” he said, and he felt terrible for ever having been short with her, felt horrible and so so guilty. He softly pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and muttered into her hair, “We’re the best together, Charley, and I don’t want to be alone, but I  _ would _ be alone if it meant that you didn’t have to be here.”

"But I do want to be here," Charley mumbled into his shoulder, and sniffed. She felt a touch of guilt over making a mess of his nice jacket, however small a problem it was, however ridiculous. She gently pulled herself out of his arms and looked at him, looked him in the eye. "I have to be here. I mean— when I'm not there, you do stupid things and you nearly get yourself killed, you— you try to get yourself killed." She pressed her lips together, willing herself to stop crying, and it suddenly hit her. "You didn't just come here to save the world, you— you really came here to die, didn't you?"

Some unrecognizable feeling jolted through him, turning his hearts as cold and heavy as stone. 

“It isn’t… it’s not like that, Charley,” he sighed. “I don’t roam the universe with a suicide wish.” As he said it, he wondered whether or not it was true. All he did was get in trouble, risk lives and limb for people and places quite menial in the grand scope of things. He made so many mistakes, and the guilt piled up and up and up...

And suddenly he understood why the Time Lords had a law of non-interference. If you did nothing, you felt nothing. There was no guilt because there were no mistakes. 

His arms snaked around her further, and he took comfort in her warmth, so different to that of the fire.

Charley stayed still for a minute, letting him hold her. She tried to think it through rationally — she couldn't, she loved him too much — and she almost wanted to get closer to him, like they had been before. If she could just press herself to him as hard as she could, and then harder, and then if she held her breath and wished hard and held on tight enough they'd be a whole person together again. She couldn't do that — that was too close, unsafely close, losing-who-you-are-on-your-own close — but she missed the security of it. He wouldn't keep trying to leave her if they were one person again. 

The thought of touching him suddenly sent a panic through her, shocked her with memories of the skin on their hands twisting and fusing together and him in her head and her in his, and she pushed him off in a manner which she realized a second after she'd done it was too rough and too sudden. Odd how she remembered their trip in the tube. They were safe, all tucked away together in that body, but they were also viscerally disgusting. She couldn't lose her agency like that, not ever again.

She couldn't remember getting out of breath, but she had to gasp for air.

"I don't want you hurt," she managed, her voice a whisper. "I can't stand when you're hurt, I can't— I can't stand it. I need you to tell me you're okay, and don't lie to me, not about this."

He wasn't fine, not really. Even now, there were vestiges of pain, remnants from when his senses had been burned out of him, like the smoldering ashes of a forest fire. It left a general state of malaise, a shuddering weakness, a migraine. The Doctor felt as if his peripheral vision had been stripped away, as if he'd lost the ability to hear above a certain wavelength, as if his nerve endings had been fried until everything felt dull.

He felt off-balance, off-kilter, off-put. And, to make matters worse, Charley had just pushed him off her as if she'd been burned, and he felt exceptionally cold, even though the fire blazed steady and strong. The Doctor's hand followed her trajectory, reaching out until it couldn't reach further, until she was too far away. He retracted it.

"Charley," he rasped, and cleared his throat. He remembered the gash left there by her brooch. There had been no blood, as if even his body didn't want to accept the fact that he'd been hurt by her. But he wasn't hurt by her, he hadn't been hurt by her, and he didn't think he ever could be. 

_ Unless she leaves _ , his mind supplied, and he remembered  _ memento mori _ , and the fact that everyone leaves or dies, and suddenly he felt the absence she'd left in his arms more than ever. 

"Charley," he repeats. 

He didn't want to lie to her. But he didn't want to be truthful either. He sighed, and relented. 

"No," he admitted, "No, Charley, I'm not."

The Doctor didn't elaborate. He didn't think she'd be able to stand the scope of it.

The open, raw hurt of him actually being honest cut into her, digging into her chest, taking root in her heart. She knew that she’d never understand the magnitude of what he’d suffered, not really, and the fact that she couldn’t give him that understanding burned her. She was drowned then in the overwhelming need to hold him, and the fact that she’d had such a quick, evil, innate reaction to contact made her almost more frightened than hearing the stark truth out of the Doctor did. Something in her body didn’t trust him anymore, and she wasn’t sure if she could live with that. 

“Then you need me,” she finally said, gingerly, voice small and uneven. “I need to make sure you don’t—” She stopped, and she was crying again. “I need to keep you safe, I need to... I  _ need _ to love you.” 

Once she’d said it, it hung there in the air between them like smoke from their fire. But she couldn’t go back on it. This was what they were doing now. Saying everything. Telling the truth. She added, quieter, “I need you to let me love you.” 

She took a step back towards him, telling herself over and over  _ I trust him I trust him I trust him I trust him _ , and she held out a hand.

The Doctor grabbed Charley's hand as if it were instinct (and in a way, it was; they needed to hold onto each other as they stumbled about this new universe, they needed each other to see, to evolve, to live). His palm found hers the way a sunflower finds the sun. 

"I don't want to see you hurt, Charley," he says, his voice a whisper, "I— I can't see you hurt."

"Then don't say you'd rather I wasn't here," she replied, giving his hand a squeeze. "I need to be here, and I... I  _ want _ to be here. I mean, what's the alternative? Dying in the dirigible crash? Going home and being given a husband? Having children? Doctor, I don't—" She sighed, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand. "You can't see me as that person, you wouldn't know a thing about me if you did."

"But what about your brooch? Passing it on to your daughter?" he asked, and realized he was being less than logical. Charley had never expressed the desire to get married, settle down — in fact, ever since they had met, she'd been every inch the Edwardian Adventuress, sneaking onto dirigibles for the thrill of it, traveling to Singapore for the excitement. He'd been projecting his need for her to be safe onto her, which was unfair — why wasn’t she allowed to live the life he had been living for centuries?

"I don't want a daughter," she said, and she couldn't help but be frustrated. He knew she didn't want that, he had to know, he was just—

She let out the breath she'd been holding. He just wanted her safe. That was it. Just like she wanted him safe. 

"What I want," she continued, and she forced her voice level, "is this." She meant the travelling, the adventuring, but she couldn't take her eyes off their hands, together, when she said it. "Your life — our life — is perfect. It really is. It's a dream." She made herself look up at him, meeting his eyes. "The only thing in the universe that could make it better is if I could keep you safe and whole forever. Stop you from being hurt." She dropped his hand and instead touched her fingertips to his jaw, gently tipping his head up so she could press a little kiss to the scar across his throat.

Charley’s touch didn’t feel like sparks to the Doctor, didn’t feel like the electricity of an unfamiliar presence. Her fingers under his jaw didn’t cause his hearts to speed up in his chest. They were human hot and felt like home. They felt like the warm glow of the TARDIS, the candlelit rooms and plush rugs. 

The Doctor grabbed her hand as it left his skin, holding it in his grasp almost reverently. Her lips were soft where he could feel them, where sensation wasn’t dulled by the extra tissue of a scar. 

“Unfortunately, the only thing in the universe that could make it better isn’t in this universe,” he said quietly. He felt like if he spoke too loudly, he’d ruin the moment, burst it like a bubble.

Charley wasn't sure if she was supposed to laugh or not; not sure if he’d intended that to be funny. Often, his jokes fell flat, not because she didn't have a sense of humor, but because, she supposed, after nine hundred-odd years one ran out of good jokes. In his case that wasn't enough to make him stop telling them. 

"We'll get back home," she eventually said. "And while we're here, I'll take care of you. And, I mean— when we get back to our universe I could... I could keep taking care of you." She looked at him for a moment, and then pulled him into a tight hug. "I know you keep me around to remind you you're not immortal," she said, looking over his shoulder at the cave wall, at how the firelight twisted shadows across it, and yes, saying it sort of hurt but he'd said it himself and she'd have to get used to it, "but I keep myself around because—" 

It was silly to get hung up over it, especially because they'd said it, both of them, so much over the past however long it was in that tube, but the words still caught in her throat. She shrugged a little bit in his arms, and decided that she had to desensitize herself to saying it, one way or another, even if it wasn't mutual. 

"Because I love you."

"I love you too," he replied instantly, his mouth moving of its own volition.

The Doctor curled his arms around her, holding fast as a fist, and nestled his head in the crook of her neck. She smelled like dust, like sand and soot and Charley; he tensed his grasp on her so it was tight and secure and he could pretend that they were together and he wasn’t alone. 

"I didn't mean what I said," he muttered into her throat, his breath as warm as she was.

She let out a sigh laden with relief, and pulled him closer, a hand half tangled in his hair. Hearing that allowed her, even on a different planet in a different galaxy in a different universe, to feel like she was home. 

"I love you," she repeated, redundantly. Or — maybe not. It didn't feel redundant. It felt necessary, as much as breathing. She leaned back in the embrace, just enough to catch sight of him, and then fell closer again, bumping her nose against his. "I'm glad you're you again," she murmured, because they hadn't really talked about that either. "I wasn't much fond of Zagreus."

He smiled, relieved. The Doctor had been afraid, before; he’d thought that love would be constricting, like a snake wrapped around his lungs, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t forgetting yourself or losing yourself in a whirlwind of flesh and time and evolution. It was freeing, it was knowing, it was fact. 

For a moment, just a split second, he didn’t think it mattered that time didn’t exist. In fact, he thought he’d rather it didn’t, wished for it to freeze and leave him basking in the golden glow of the fire, the smell of smoke saturating their clothes, the thrum of the beating of their hearts rapping in his ears. Together, but so blissfully independent. 

Then Charley had mentioned Zagreus, and the fire turned sinister, melted his happiness like a tallow candle. Guilt embittered him, and he looked away from her. 

The sound from when he — Zagreus — had slapped her still echoed, resounded like his shouts as he’d hunted her down in his infinite ship, the hammering of metal on an anvil, the pleading and confusing and forgetting. 

“I’m sorry,” he said again, because he couldn’t think beyond the guilt and cacophony of his memories.

She realized she shouldn't have brought it up. It broke her heart; it really, really did. Because she knew as well as he must that Zagreus hadn’t been him, but just like that didn’t stop him from apologizing, it didn’t stop her from catching him out of the corner of her eye and wanting to flinch away. She hated it; she hated herself for it. She was revolting for thinking he'd ever hurt her, but she couldn’t stop that instinct. 

She took his face in her hands and turned him back towards her, rubbing her thumbs gently back and forth on his cheeks, under his eyes. "I'm not sure if anyone's ever told you this," she began, just because no one had ever told it to her, "but you don't need to apologize for things you didn't do."

There was a cinch around his stomach, like it had gotten tangled in with the rest of his organs, knotted and netted in his intestines. He had wrapped himself in guilt so much that his insides were wrapping with him, twisting and turning. The Doctor’s eyes flickered down, away from Charley’s. He swallowed, and it felt like he’d gulped down a peach pit.

It hadn’t been him. Zagreus wasn’t him. It wasn’t him, so he didn’t need to apologize. But he was the Doctor, and he—he should have been able to contain it. He should have, because he was the Doctor, and the Doctor makes things better and not worse, and what was the point of calling himself this if he didn’t stand by that, honor his own Hippocratic Oath? 

“I should have been able to fight it,” he murmured. 

It hadn’t been him, but it had been his fault.

Zagreus, true to form, had sat inside his head. It had wriggled in and taken over and sent him whirling in nausea and dizziness and pain. It had hurt, being consumed by it, it’d felt like his nerves had burned and withered away. None of it, however, had hurt as much as it had when he’d hurt Charley.

She almost kissed him. She really almost did. It was an innate reaction, instinct, to seeing him like this. She stopped herself, of course. It wasn’t necessary for their survival now, so he probably wouldn't appreciate it. She diverted that need to express that feeling in her chest into a small kiss to his forehead, and brushed some of his curls back for good measure. It was a loving gesture, but not loving enough. What in the world could be loving enough?

It  _ was _ wholly upsetting, though. He always did this; he always found a way to make things that he couldn't have stopped his own fault. She stroked his cheek with her thumb, and said, because she hoped this would catch him in the painful double standard he held himself to, "Oh, yes. Like  _ I _ should have been able to keep the Time Lords from using me as a portal to the divergent universe."

The Doctor shook his head desperately. "No, no," he said forcefully, grasping her tighter. "It's not the same, it's..." He tried to think of what to say to make it make as much sense as it made in his head. He blamed his lack of eloquence on his tiredness. "I'm the  _ Doctor _ , I'm supposed to be able to deal with this, supposed to fix it! It's...it's not the same." 

Over the millennia, his companions' trust in him had built up and up, stacking atop each other like layers of bricks. They’d depended on him to fix things, to help people get better. He was held at a higher standard than everyone else — a higher standard than Charley, certainly, who was only in her late twenties in comparison to his early thousands.

"My sweet old heart." Charley gave him a little smile, and it was a genuine one, from the depths of her soul. She wasn’t angry with him anymore, wasn’t even frustrated. Any doubt she had that he cared for her was gone. The way he defended her, even to herself.... one didn’t talk that way about someone one didn’t have a lot of love for. "If what I failed to do isn't my fault, then what you failed to do isn't yours." She took one of his hands in both of hers and pressed her lips to his knuckles. "We're the same, remember?"

He knew that it would take a lot longer for his guilt to weather away. A rock built and hardened over a thousand years would take more than a thousand years to be eroded to dust. But that little bit that she had chipped off felt like a boulder being removed from his chest, like a hot air balloon releasing a sandbag and ascending further. He felt free. 

The Doctor felt that bit reluctant to go, still stuck in the hardened clay of his regret. It intruded on his freedom, and he didn't much appreciate it.  _ What you fail to do isn't your fault _ , it said, its tone parroting Charley's in a way that made him feel terrible for thinking of it at all. It gave her words an indignity that she didn't deserve.  _ Wouldn't some philosopher or other say something along the lines of: 'inaction is worse than action'? _

_ To hell with the philosophers, _ the Doctor thought back, wanting to revel in this weightlessness, this freedom.  _ I'll never see them again, anyway _ .

The Doctor's gaze followed the path of Charley's hands, watching with an ardent fascination, like a man seeing for the first time.  _ It's amazing _ , he thought,  _ how eyes work _ . Amazing, the orange-hued glow from the fire dancing on Charley's skin, the way she was soft and strong and dotted with freckles like constellations, composed of stars he would never see again. She was a good reminder, though, of what they looked like: fiery, a light so light it blotted out even the darkest of shadows.

She pressed a kiss to his knuckles, still bruised from punching a hole in the glass. Her lips were soft like a whisper on his skin, not hard and pervasive like their kiss back in that tube. Her hands felt so natural holding his, as if they were tailor-made for him, measured and fitted so they sat in his palm perfectly. Inversely, he supposed his hands were made for her. They were made for each other, after all. 

"The same," he echoes, his eyes looking up at her face then, mesmerized in the way the fire was mirrored in her pupils. "I remember."

"Good," she said, and she knew she wasn't really getting through to him, not fully, and it was enough to make her want to cry again, but she couldn't worry him like that. She'd already worried him enough. "Don't go forgetting it."

She realized, then, how exhausted she was. It was almost like the feeling she'd gotten in the tube, when all her senses had returned at once, and the weeks of walking had caught up to her. She leaned her forehead on his shoulder. They'd barely scratched the surface of the pile of things they should probably talk about and process out loud, but maybe they'd done enough for one night. She tucked her arms around his waist and murmured, "Do Time Lords sleep?"

“Of course we do,” the Doctor said, and accentuated his point with a yawn. Usually he wouldn’t admit to it, would say something along the lines of ‘sleep is for tortoises’, but the time in the tube had made him so terribly tired, and Charley was hot against him, the fire a warm glow against his eyelids, and he found himself quite sleepy indeed. “Everything sleeps, Charley, in one way or another. Why?”

"I don't know, I just figured..." She trailed off, not wanting to get into her very shoddy understanding of what Time Lords actually were. As far as she was concerned, they were just people with fewer social inhibitions. "I thought I might sleep, just for a bit, and I didn't want to leave you with the responsibility to stay up, that's all."

The Doctor smiled softly, and leaned his head on hers, pressing his lips to her hair gently.

“Sleep, Charley. It’s been months since you have. I’d imagine you’d quite like to catch up on that missing time. In fact, I wouldn’t mind hitting the hay myself.”

Charley settled her head against his chest, and stared off into the fire, watching it flicker and change. She felt safe with him, she realized. Despite Zagreus, despite everything he'd said and done while it was in him, she still knew she could trust him. Her body was still letting her trust him. That settled something deep inside her. 

She sighed, and said, quietly, "I do love you."

The Doctor wrapped his arms around Charley’s stomach and leaned back against the wall. It wasn’t very comfortable, but the Doctor thought that at this point, he could probably have slept on a bed of spikes. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been this tired. His eyes slid closed.

When Charley spoke, a lazy smile crawled onto his face, soft as down, warm as the fire blazing in front of them. The Doctor planted another kiss on the crown of her head, and whispered into her hair, “I love you too, Charley. Now get some rest.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow [me!](%E2%80%9Ceightdoctor.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) and [bel!](%E2%80%9Clesbian-donna-noble.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) on tumblr!


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